Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1415897
70 SMT007 MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2021 gap in the marketplace where the big chip or system company who is designing for federal or government use, the space, rocket, or medi- cal companies, want to be their own design au- thority, so they need a manufacturing partner who's not going to insist on having IP. You've got to be IP flexible to capitalize on this new trend. Johnson: Right. Now, 30 years ago, those same semiconductor companies would have had an in-house manufacturing arm to do that, to cre- ate a finished goods board subassembly; gen- erally, all that is gone now. Everitt: In the past, companies managed their own prototypes, their new product introduc- tions, their early batch, their pilot build, or pro- duction verification builds. Use whatever ter- minology you prefer, it depends on the market. Many have lost the in-house board manufac- turing capabilities and the associated innova- tion. Growing up in the manufacturing world, one thing I've learned is most of the innova- tion comes from interaction between the tech- nical staff and the manufacturing floor, solving real world problems on how you make things and how you make things better. at ability to innovate has been severely diminished with- in the U.S. supply chain. It is one of the things I found so interesting about Naprotek. Our en- gineers and our customers' engineers are working hand in hand with the shop floor on custom process solutions, custom manufacturing solu- tions every day, and it directly influences how to design the product better. It creates this virtual cycle—making a better product equates to designing better products. Johnson: How do you see dig- ital twin fitting in your busi- ness model? Is digital twin a strategic vision for you? Everitt: e conceptual idea of a digital twin is highly relevant to the design community, and I would expect that the concept will be de- ployed more broadly in the high cost of build, and high cost of failure systems, (e.g., rock- et engines and launch vehicles). It would be reasonable to assume that the data we collect through our manufacturing would be used in our customer's virtual models, simulation, and systems digital twins; however, we are not the design authority, so this is not directly on our roadmap. We will of course continue to drive the rigor in our systems to collect the relevant data for our high reliability customers to sup- port their successful data integration. Johnson: Are implementing capabilities such as CFX and machine intercommunication up and down the manufacturing? Everitt: Yes, we leverage a multi-axis approach to essentially produce a "connected factory." You can run this process on one of two axes, including the product or process axis. Because we have such an incredible diversity of cus- tomers and part numbers that we support, we run our process control at the process axis lev- el rather than the product axis. We might build only 10 of an assembly for a customer in a year, Since the founding 25 years ago, Naprotek has specialized in serving highly regulated product markets.